This compilation of three different plays based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem—known as the Yiddish Mark Twain—was adapted by Arnold Perl from his 1953 off-Broadway play and aired on The Play of the Week in 1959. "A Tale of Chelm" features Zero Mostel as a befuddled religious teacher who tries to buy a goat in a town of fools; Nancy Walker plays his wife. Jack Gilford stars in "Bontche Schweig" as a recently deceased soul awaiting judgment in heaven; Lee Grant costars as an angel who argues on his behalf. "The High School" features Morris Carnovsky as a Jewish merchant who is cajoled by his wife (Gertrude Berg) into preparing their teenage son for high school, in spite of quotas designed to limit Jewish enrollment.

The Peabody Award-winning series Play of the Week aired for two seasons (1959–61) over New York's independent Channel 13, in its not-yet-public broadcasting incarnation, WNTA. The brainchild of legendary TV producer David Susskind and WNTA president Ely Landau, this weekly anthology featured classic and contemporary plays recorded on videotape and broadcast nightly and on Sunday afternoons. Though production values were modest and actors were paid scale, the series attracted many of the leading New York-based actors and directors of its day.